"—demand a price—"
"—for this," the norns warned.
"It will—"
"—be very—"
"—dear."
The room felt darker. They didn't like being asked for help.
"What can I give you?" Jendara opened her belt pouch, her heart heavy. She had the horrible feeling that if she didn't offer the right payment, she wouldn't make it out of this room.
"Something—"
"—very dear—"
"—to you."
"All right." She reached inside the belt pouch, feeling for the ring she kept at the very bottom. She held it up.
"Ahh." Their breath stirred the loose bits of Jendara's hair.
"A—"
"—wedding—"
"—ring?"
"The last thing I have of my dead husband's. It's solid gold."
The norns scowled.
"But you—"
"—do not treasure it—"
"—any longer."
"Are you—"
"—trying—"
"—to cheat us?"
Their voice made the floorboard rumble beneath Jendara's boots. Jendara took a step back. "No! Of course not. I just—I'm sorry."
She reached back inside the belt pouch, cursing her stupidity. She felt the broken edges of Kalira's crow pendant and knew instinctively it too would hold little value, not now that her sister had stolen Kran. Any dearness it had once held had been driven out by that treachery.
Kran.
Her fingers stopped moving inside the pouch. Yes, there was something dear to her here. Her heart clenched a little as she pulled out Kran's string ball, the one she'd found in his room.
"Would you accept this?"
"You care for that," the norns acknowledged.
"But it is not—"
"—yours—"
"—to give."
The room grew darker, and their rage stirred up a hot wind that drove ashes into Jendara's face. The fire leaped up in the hearth, clawing at the edges of the walls. She covered her eyes against the brightness. The heat of the fire made the air ripple.
But a hint of coolness brushed her cheek and she saw a sudden flash of blue. It settled on the handle of her handaxe.
And then she knew. She knew what the norns would take for their payment.
"Here." She wrenched her axe from her belt. "Take this."
The norns did not move, but the axe slipped out of her grip and rose up in the air. Jendara blinked back tears. Her father had made this. She had watched him carve its fine handle and grind its edge. It had been one of the last things he touched before death claimed him, and she had kept it as close to her as she wished she had kept him. It was all she had of her father. It was all she had of the home, the clan, and the people she had cast aside after his murder.
"Yes," the norns said. "This—"
"—is what you hold—"
"—most dear."
The axe floated toward the fey creatures.
"Father," Jendara breathed. "Oh, Father..." The tears ran freely down her cheeks.
Sunlight returned to the room. The fire subsided. There was no sign of the axe.
"We will help. But you will not—"
"—find what you seek—"
"—inside this house."
Their voices blended into unison once more. "Follow the goat."
"The goat?" Jendara pointed at the ceiling. "The goat on the roof?"
The fire crackled, and she was suddenly alone in an ordinary cottage, sunlight streaming in to show a few dusty yarn-making supplies on the table. Jendara looked around herself. Other than the fading fire, the place looked as if no one had set foot in it for years. She checked her belt. No axe. She hadn't been dreaming.
She hurried outside just in time to see the shaggy goat jump down from the roof. Gold glinted in its eyes for a second. Then it began trotting toward the forest at the far end of the valley.
"All right. I'm following the goat." She jogged after the creature.
∗ ∗ ∗
The valley wriggled its way between the two great ridges of rock, growing narrower as it went. The rocks leaned closer to each other as the gap between them closed. They loomed over Jendara, grim and sere. She reached for the comforting heft of her axe handle and felt a pang at its absence.
The goat looked over its shoulder, bleating softly. It shook its head from side to side, showing off its mismatched horns, one curving down, one curving up. It snorted at her.
"I'm coming." She picked up her pace. It had kept its lead on her, despite showing no signs of hurrying. But then, it had four legs and she had only two.
The goat hopped over a fallen branch. Jendara hadn't realized the little forest was so close. She paused a moment, studying the trees that choked the end of the valley. The foliage stood out black against the cloudy sky.
She looked back down and saw the goat's tail disappearing between two stocky pines. "Hey, wait!"
It kept running. She chased after it, her feet thudding on the thick humus of the forest floor. Yet within a few moments, she slowed to a halt. The goat was gone. And she felt eyes on her.
She turned a slow circle, peering between the trees. No birds chirped. No wind ruffled the tree branches. The air sat heavy, like a held breath caught in a throat. She was alone.
She took a few steps forward. A shiver ran through her. It was cooler in the little forest, shut away from the sun. But that didn't explain the clamminess in the air or the breeze she could have sworn she felt against her cheek but which somehow didn't ruffle the branch beside her. No, there was something uncanny about this place.
She strode forward again, letting her eyes rove around her. She couldn't help but hope the goat would appear, nibbling leaves off a seedling or munching a fern. Her eyebrows drew together. Had she even seen any ferns? She scanned the area for undergrowth, herbs or brush or bracken, and came up blank. There were only trees, large trees, stretching to the sky. Not even a deadfall or a seedling to break up the endless field of dead leaves and pine needles.
A branch snapped under her boot. She flinched at the sound, but felt reassured. At least there were fallen branches. She stooped to pluck the branch from the ground, wondering how fresh it might be. Perhaps the area was simply kept cleared by the norns.
The branch in her hand was not wood. She turned the mossy thing over in her fingers, taking in the steep curve of it, the brittle shards where it had snapped underfoot. It had to be a rib. She dropped the bone onto the ground.
"Is it too much to hope that wasn't human?" she asked out loud. She took a careful step forward and felt the leaves shift over something hard and lumpy.
A tendril of fog crept across the dead leaves and spread across the ground, obscuring the unevenness below. But Jendara had to look. She squatted and brushed aside the thick layer of leaves and dirt.
She wasn't surprised to see the half-unburied skull staring up at her.
The fog twisted on the leaves, snaking out and wrapping around her leg. Its touch was icy even through her pants. She shook it off. But already more mist wended its way between the trees, breaking off from a heavy fog bank that already obscured the forest ahead.
Her right arm prickled. Jendara stood up, narrowing her eyes at the stuff. She was beginning to get tired of mist, especially when it refused to behave like ordinary fog.
A low moan came out of the fog bank.
"What do you want from me?" she shouted. Her voice sounded flat, muffled by the fog.
"Traitor," something whispered.
Her left hand went numb. Jendara flexed her fingers. Her arms felt strange, hot on the right, cold on the left, and tingly all over. Her eyes went wide as tiny stinging welts rose up around the edges of her jolly roger tattoos.
"You turned your back on your people," a voice groaned in her ear.
A tree branch smashed into Jendara's face.
She stumbled back. She was alone, she'd swear to it, but the voices—she couldn't fi
ght those here with so much fog to hide them. Maybe she could draw them out.
"See if you can catch me!" she shouted. She spun and ran back toward the entrance to the forest.
Bones jutted out from the forest floor and threatened to trip her. Skulls rolled and crunched underfoot. She stumbled. What was this horrible place?
Something cackled behind her, and she risked a quick look over her shoulder to see.
The earth dropped out beneath her, and suddenly she was falling. She hit a rock and skidded down some kind of bank, landing in a clump of ferns. She lay still, glad for the soft landing.
Ferns. She looked up and saw that she'd left the forest behind. With a grin, she sat up, rubbing her side where the rock had scraped her ribs. Nothing felt broken.
The bank she'd slid down loomed over her, a good tall stretch of rock and dirt that looked as if it had recently washed out. Just beyond her clump of ferns, a small stream gurgled, hurrying along in its bed of round gray rocks. She clambered out of the ferns and drank right out of the stream. It chilled her teeth, but tasted delicious.
She got to her feet. To the left, the ground sloped upward, disappearing into the darkness of the forest. To the right, the stream ran downhill. She'd follow it. It couldn't be far to the ocean from here. Maybe she'd run into the goat again. Even a goat had sense enough to follow a stream.
It was strange how she'd lost the goat in a forest with no undergrowth. It was almost as if the creature had disappeared. A silly thought to have about a goat. She couldn't imagine a less magical creature. She'd spent her childhood herding them and milking them, chasing them all over the island of Crow's Nest. Her father's best goat, a nanny named Silver, was a wild thing, always racing off and climbing into the cormorant's nesting area—
The chatter in Jendara's mind caught up with itself there. She paused, remembering the big shaggy nanny goat from her youth. Hadn't she had one horn that tipped up and one that tipped down, just like the goat Jendara had chased into the forest?
She scrubbed goose bumps off her arms. "No wonder wisewomen act so crazy. This place drives them insane." There was no way her father's goat was prancing around this island, leading her into a forest filled with skeletons. No, all of this had to be like that moment in the waves when she forgot how to swim: a mind trick.
Jendara strode forward briskly. She would follow this stream to the ocean, circle back to the cove, and confront the norns with her sword. They owed her some answers.
A woman sprang up from the ground, appearing out of nowhere, her face entirely blue with spiral tattoos. "No one owes you anything, traitor!"
Jendara's fist shot out. Cold mist furled around her knuckles, freezing cold. Jendara gasped. She tried to shake off the stuff.
The woman laughed again, even though half of her face had turned to mist and twisted off to grip Jendara's hand. Further wisps broke away from her cheek and jaw and spun into spirals. They floated in the air like gnats.
"In the Forest of Souls, only the Wise may survive. You'll be crab food before nightfall, pirate."
The mist broke into droplets. The woman vanished.
"The Forest of Souls. I should have known." Jendara cursed herself for forgetting. This island wasn't just a testing place for shamans and wisewomen. The most powerful of them returned here to die so that their deaths might strengthen the ancestor spirits. It took great dedication to keep one's soul on this plane, bound to one's people. This was the place that made souls strong.
She lifted her chin. She might not be a ghost, but the spirit inside her was getting tougher by the minute. This place couldn't break her. She was an islander—an islander who had made her way in the most dangerous job the world offered.
"And I'm not a traitor," she growled. "I've had my doubts, but I'm starting to see things your way."
She felt a powerful prickling in her hands. She flexed her fingers. She had no axe to grip, and the things she'd seen on this island were impervious to sword and knife. If she was fighting spirits, she was truly unarmed.
But then again, maybe she didn't need weapons to win this kind of fight.
She raised her hands over her head. "Come and get me."
The wind struck her with a scream.
Ribbons of blue mist twisted around her. Faces flashed in the fog, their voices strident and cruel. She ignored the show and dropped into a fighting stance. She might not be able to punch these ghosts, but she wasn't going to be caught off balance.
"Is this the best you've got?" she bellowed.
A transparent wolf snapped blue teeth at her. She laughed.
Hooves thudded against the earth, and she turned to face the sound, a grin spreading across her face. If they were planning to run her down with some kind of ghost horse, she could handle that. She opened her mouth to toss off another jibe.
And stopped.
A huge creature broke through the mist. Its massive red body flashed in the sunlight and its horns spread wider than anything Jendara had ever seen. Its hooves sounded like thunder.
It was red. Red, when the fog and all its spirits were blue. The elk dropped its horns and charged straight at her.
She leaped into the creek.
Its hooves kicked up earth as it surged past her, and Jendara felt her heart miss a beat. A red elk. There hadn't been a red elk on the archipelago for at least a thousand years. She stared at it a moment, absorbing its long legs and powerful haunches, the heavy ruff around its neck. It whirled around and stared back at her with liquid black eyes. She could sense the great age in their depths. Its nostrils flared.
Ancient or not, it was drawing itself up for another charge. Jendara broke into a sprint. She couldn't outrun a creature like this, but she was dead if she didn't try. She leaped over a boulder in her path, splashing down into deeper water. Her ankle twisted. Jendara ignored it.
Its hooves splashed behind her. She jumped onto the next big rock, then to the next. The creek sounded louder here, its plash and gurgle turning more serious. She jumped again, knowing the elk was right behind her now.
She landed on a slick boulder and just caught herself. The creek bed dropped here, following the steep slope of the island bedrock. Below her, the water made a dark pool before spilling out in a narrow stream. The stream glistened as it ran out to the stony beach and then cut through the thin strip of sand beside the sea. She'd found the far side of the island.
The elk snorted. There was no place to go but down.
She jumped.
She got lucky. Her mass drove her to the bottom of the pool, a deep basin, and her knees buckled on impact. She paddled toward the surface, fighting the force of falling water. An eddy dragged her back under. She flailed around herself and found a handhold, pulled away from the center of the pool.
Lungs screaming, she burst out of the water. The red elk soared over her head.
She had hoped to leave him behind, but clearly this was still his territory. She scrambled out of the pool. It was no place to fight.
The elk pawed the ground. Jendara raced past him. Maybe, just maybe, he was only defending his stretch of the forest. She could leave his territory, find safety, get back to the norns. She put a burst of speed into her legs. The stones clattered beneath her feet. She hit open sand, the ocean just ahead.
The elk bugled behind her. It exploded onto the beach. Jendara could feel the sand vibrating under the force of its hooves. She spun around, drawing her sword.
At top speed, the elk raced past her, hooking her sword in the tine of one great antler. The blade flew from her hand and landed point-down in sea foam. The elk twisted around, putting its body between her and her weapon.
Jendara's mouth went dry. There was no cover. Nothing to distract it. And all she had was her belt knife.
The wind tugged strands of hair into her ears. She shook her head. She needed to think. The wind gusted again, whipping up currents of sand.
That was it. Maybe she could blind it with sand and get to her sword. She dropped into a squa
t, digging her fingers into the grit. The elk whuffed at her.
Something heavy and smooth pressed against her fingers, buried in the sand. A shaft of some kind. She tugged at it, eyes widening as a six-foot length of pale wood came free and the wind swept the surface clean. She brought up the spear and immediately couched it in the sand. Tendrils of fog twisted around the elk's hooves.
Once again, it dropped its antlers and charged.
Jendara gripped the spear with both hands, staggering as the tip punched into the elk's ribcage and sliced through its heart. She felt a moment's pang. It was a magnificent creature, beautiful and ancient. It flailed its antlers in its death agony. She twisted away from the wicked tines and tumbled into the sand.
The elk cried out, its voice nearly human, and its antlers burst into twists of blue and gold mist. Light streamed from the hole in its chest. Jendara shielded her eyes, but there was no escaping the brightness. The light surrounded the creature, surrounded Jendara, filled her and flooded her entire being. Heat pulsed within her every muscle. Her eyes tingled. She cried out as her right arm seethed and twitched, burning inside.
Then she was just herself again, alone on a beach. The spear lay on the sand, perfectly clean.
She got to her feet, her legs like jelly, and looked herself over. She was dry, and nothing hurt. She touched her face, feeling for the bruises from the battle on Sorind. She pulled back her sleeve. No gray stain, no wriggling black lines beneath the skin. And the right hand itself—
Her jaw dropped. Her hand was suntanned and square, just as it always looked, but the back of the hand was nearly smooth, the burns and brand gone, the jolly roger missing. A black dot sat on the skin, a thin circle of silver scar tissue surrounding it like a moat.
She brought up the left hand for comparison. The knuckles looked fine, the scrapes gone. The skull and crossbones remained, the ink gone blue like the tattoos of a very old sailor.
Jendara plopped onto the sand, stunned. Something had happened. That elk—or was it an elk? Where had it gone? And what about the spear? Where had it come from? Why hadn't it disappeared when the elk vanished? And what about that light?
"The bit with the sand was my idea."
Jendara's mouth fell open. She jumped to her feet, searching around herself for the source of that voice—a voice a she had never hoped to hear again.
Pathfinder Tales: Skinwalkers Page 25
